Do humans have intrinsic moral value? (Page 2)

sebtheanimal: I cannot speak for Weeper but she sure raised hell. In the morning I expect anti-capitalist and other poor bastards to chime in on this topic, in order to try to gain favour.

Arcadio Buendia: Her professor assigns a paper "Do humans have intrinsic moral value?". She is probably already very knowledgeable in the subject. But it wouldn't hurt to have others opinions to compare and contrast I would do that lol

GrimWeeper: I won’t try to answer this now because I’m afraid I’d get tangled up trying to unpick the assumptions that I think are behind it.

When it comes to moral decisions, it sounds like the questioner, like many others, thinks that obedience to a (suitably powerful) authority is more important than minimising suffering. I can’t agree. I think that the ultimate test for the correctness of a moral decision is the amount of suffering or wellbeing it can be expected to cause, and not whether the action has been forbidden or allowed.

'Do not kill other humans’ is a great rule of thumb. If our moral behaviour is ultimately motivated by a concern to minimise suffering and maximise wellbeing, then this guideline, just like 'Do not lie’ or 'Do not Steal’ will very often lead us to do the right thing. It’s a shortcut.

Newtonian physics is convenient and serves us well most of the time, but for particular problems we need to turn to Einstein’s more accurate model. Similarly 'Do not kill other humans’ is convenient, but inappropriate for certain questions. We can easily think of situations in which the right thing to do is to kill, steal or lie. If your 'moral compass’ is functioning normally my guess is that in many of those imagined situations you’d sanction killing stealing or lying exactly because those are the actions that would result in the least suffering.

sebtheanimal: PC will be the undoing of civilization, in short.

sebtheanimal: (Political Correctness)

Arcadio Buendia: Right. So if you could save 100 innocent people by killing a few innocent ones...? I would hate to be in that kind of situation. But I think you already know what I would do.

sebtheanimal: This is more theoretical if anything. The example you pose is never quite so austere where it is purely a numbers game. Akin to the father who gives up his son in order to save a train wreck thus preventing hundreds of deaths.

Arcadio Buendia: True. That's why I am not so big on the social sciences. Physics is more straightforward where even weird behavior on a quantum level is understood to a fairly good degree. My real answer to this question is simply "I do not know".

sebtheanimal: I can certainly see if not comprehend a rigid behaviour in the quantum universe, where an action has a pre-determined reaction. Morals do not come into play in the least. Not should they. Human value is determined by his/her output, in essence, as cruel as it may appear.

calybonos:
In a world where death is the hunter,and no matter how noble our aspirations are,we will all have our heads mounted in it's trophy room one day,there is no time for regrets or doubts.
Choose your rules to this game according to your (for want of a better word) heart.
Play by those rules,but don't be afraid to change them as you feel necessary to be able to say:

I fought the good fight,my fight.....the right fight.

...or,you could always become a politician,sit back and enjoy watching the war.

efrancina6: I don't see a straightforward answer to this question. By saying yes or no, you either sided with biological deterministic approach or the cultural deterministic approach. I am in the middle of both for I believe both in genetics and psycho-sociocultural roles.

Think of a child, for instance. It is the social environment that develops and shapes the child's intrinsic personality traits whether the morality lessons are taught to him or her or s/he learns them through modeling or mimicking people around him/her or what s/he sees on the television or computer. Some children, despite growing up with a loving environment, can still turned into a psychopath or sociopath and may either express these psychopathic or sociopathic traits into either criminal behaviors or acquiring a social position where these traits can be safely or covertly expressed (i.e. a warden, a feared leader, an unethical lawyer/scientist, etc). Then, there are some children, who, despite growing up in an abusive or unloving environment - be it mental, physical or sexual or simply the absence of family intimacy - can still able to grow up resiliently as a healthy adult and lived an ethical life and capable to hold on to their moral values even when under duress. This is why I feel there is no straightforward answer to your question of whether or not humans have intrinsic moral values for it is complicated. Some people can commit things against their moral values when their life or the life of their love ones are at stake, and some are resolute to hold on to their humanity and resist to keep what is morally right.

dragotron: Id say an intrinsic moral value is a part of many of our cousins in the animal world as well as ourselves. I do believe we can be born kind. I'm sure there are studies on it. It is definitely beneficial... for the same reasons that many successful species tend to care for their herd and beyond that. I believe that being good is part genes and part environment/social conditioning.

Quantum zero: NO! Moral behavior is a choice!

dragotron: It serves us well to be good... and to think positively... more and more humans are realizing this... this will only exponentially increase.

SIutskysTheorem: GrimWeeper wrote: "Similarly 'Do not kill other humans’ is convenient, but inappropriate for certain questions. We can easily think of situations in which the right thing to do is to kill, steal or lie. If your 'moral compass’ is functioning normally my guess is that in many of those imagined situations you’d sanction killing stealing or lying exactly because those are the actions that would result in the least suffering."

How about, "do not aggress against others if you are unjustified in doing so."

This seems very reasonable and it doesn't preclude the killing of others who have aggressed against *you.* This is the foundation of natural law - what the Romans called "right reason in accordance with reality" and what we call today "an evolutionary stable strategy for the use of force."

Morality, like other analytic knowledge, is most certainly attainable. We can observe reality, and use our ability to reason, to deduce what is moral and what isn't based on the nature of man.

Note: some people confuse natural law with religious law. Natural law is based on rigorous reasoning and logical deduction. I'd say that religion is a very weak basis for natural law, in that you are basically told to follow blindly God's commands. So when I refer to natural law, I am speaking from a secular perspective.

natowar: I now have the answer to my question. "does weeper participate in her own topics?" The answer is no. Weeper if you are going to completely plagiarize an entire post it is courtesy to incorporate quotes and references. http://www.asktheatheists.com/questions/321-do-humans-have-intrinsic-moral-worth/ -for an example.

natowar: I would prefer your actual opinion in your own words if possible but then again..is this yet another question about morality? dun dun DUHNNNNNNNNN

LuCiD_: Morals are a choice...so no is the answer in my opinion to the question.